fuzzy post-it

purplekecleon:

I absolutely do not have time for anyone who starts off any argument with telling someone how not to be a victim. Fuck that.

i was just thinking about this moments before i saw this post, and i think there’s a distinction that’s been lost in recent years

proactively avoiding being a victim (of anything), or advising other people how to do so, is all well and good. risk aversion is a thing; telling someone how not to be a victim is ok. lock your doors. back up your hard drive. don’t visit detroit.

you should probably wear a seatbelt, right? sure, telling people that is fine.

say your friend doesn’t one day, for whatever reason, and someone else hits her and shatters her spine and she’ll never walk again.

when you walk into the hospital room, is your first reaction to stick your nose in the air and say “well, that’s what you get for not wearing a seatbelt”?

probably not because only a complete twat would do that

you might lament that she didn’t wear a seatbelt, or you might be inspired to start a campaign suggesting that other people wear seatbelts. but you don’t rub it in the person’s face because what the fuck kind of person does that? you’d be taking someone else’s pain and twisting it so you could pat yourself on the back for three seconds.

but now we have the internet, where it’s super easy to express our grunting caveman urges of oneupsmanship and conceit. this brings us the kinds of people who will respond to anything negative that happens to anyone by telling them what they ought to have done to avoid it.

this case wasn’t even as clear-cut as the seatbelt. you didn’t do anything wrong. you not only signed the artwork, but also added your tumblr url, expecting exactly this kind of thing to happen. you saw problems coming and actively strove to head them off.

but it doesn’t matter to people who just want to say “i told you so”. it doesn’t even matter that they didn’t tell you so. they’re only here to gloat that something bad happened to you and not to them, and look how smart they are for knowing in hindsight what would have avoided this problem.

after all, the alternative would be that the dude they already idolize has done something wrong. unthinkable. even if he admits he was wrong, there must be something they can hold against you. so they go for the easiest possible thing: pick a random event from the story, and claim that the story would’ve gone differently if that event had gone differently. wow! you don’t say.

effectively these people are eike kusch.

anyway i don’t think victim blaming is about considering how to avoid problems. that’s just the weapon being wielded. it’s really about being the kind of numb asshole whose first instinct, when learning of a stranger’s plight, is disdain rather than sympathy.

admiralalbatross:

Hello all, OP here.

I strongly believe that men telling you to smile on the street is absolutely non-toxic and not at all evil. I also feel that this behaviour is not at risk of ‘taking over’. That phrase really just made me imagine a girl walking down the street with literally every man shouting “SMILE SMILE SMILE” and I had a small giggle to myself.

Men telling you to smile is annoying.

When a man on the street tells me to smile, I roll my eyes. Because he’s being an idiot.

When my ex co-worker told me to smile, I told him I was busy. He and I maintained a great and appropriate friendship throughout the rest of me working there.

Feminism, to me, is not a joke. I take it quite seriously. I think it is one of the many, unfortunate consequences of the Self Esteem Movement that our generation, and a couple generations before us, have been raised in.

We really are a weak generation, but it is not our fault. Our idiotic caregivers never let us lost. Never let us figure out bullying on our own. We got participation ribbons when we showed up, even when we lost. Teachers are no longer allowed to write “F” or “0” on a paper. A teacher actually lost his job for this and I’ll post it later.

I was lucky enough to be raised by quite a realistic man. When I was nine and was in long jumping, I lost, and I got a “Participation” ribbon. When I showed it to him, he said “No, sweetheart. You lost. And I wish they showed you that. You lost, because you didn’t try hard enough.” Being raised in the Self Esteem Movement, I thought instances like this were absoultely atrocious. But he always insisted that when I grew up, I’d thank him.

And I do.

I can handle being confronted, being treated unfairly, without throwing an absolute temper tantrum, one specifically towards men. I’m competent, and I think modern day feminism shows that women are incompetent. That in the 40s, we said we can handle being in society. And now, we are proving that we cannot, because we apparently cannot handle any sort of criticism, or being laughed at.

Yes, there are assholes in the world. Many, so many. That’s the world. If everyone were pleasant, where would be the value in pleasantness.

Modern day feminism is not about women. It’s insecure, manipulative little girls with a victim complex. Because being a victim is rather luxurious.

To all feminists: You’re stronger than this. Women are stronger than this. Do not underestimate your gender.

That man who raised you is a fucking asshole. When someone gets to win, everyone else gets to lose, and how hard you try doesn’t always matter. The world is not this fantastical place where the people who put in the most effort always get the best rewards, and it is unbelievably toxic to inject that kind of fantasy into a nine-year-old’s head. Now whenever you fail, no matter what you may have done, it’s something wrong with you for not being better. (Not to mention how that fucks up the notion of what failure even is. Failure is a fabulous learning tool, not a thing to be ashamed of.)

And you certainly took the lesson to heart: here you are, blaming everyone else for not already winning, for not trying hard enough. It doesn’t matter to you that Western society is still blatantly overflowing with preconceived notions about women’s roles and limitations; if only women would try harder, far harder than men need to try for some reason, there’d be no problem. If only the poor and homeless would try harder to not be poor, if only transpeople would try harder to not get shot, if only anyone anywhere on the wrong side of a power imbalance would try harder to compensate for it.

The people I’ve seen and met with the most interesting feminist insights have also been the people with the most crap piled on them their entire lives, who attract yet more of it for bothering to speak up, and who keep buggering on despite it. Fuck your trivialization; it insults them far more than teenagers’ proclaiming their hatred of all men just because it looks like a trendy bandwagon.

ETA: The more I mull this over, the less I think I have a problem with participation ribbons. Fuck the self-esteem, that’s your own thing to work out, but it’s always nice to have a reminder that you did something, that you did try, and that even if you didn’t win, you’ve now had an experience that most people haven’t.

I observe that “Olympic athlete” and “Oscar-nominated” are still treated as pretty damn special, and nobody tells them “oh, honey, if only you’d tried harder, you pathetic failure”. You can only tell this story in the first place because you tried. I didn’t; I have no long-jump story. Taking that away from you by turning it into a shame of failure is a massive dick move. People who learn that lesson just stop trying so they don’t fail so often, and here you are, railing against trying.

thatsalamenceguy:

I get it but I also get why OP is bothered - because if you just ignore toxic people, they’ll end up taking over. Letting evil happen makes you as bad as the evil people. If people just let the toxic social justice warriors take over, they’ll completely make a JOKE out of the movement and no one will take it seriously (like third wave feminism). 

let me get this straight

overzealous feminists who, by and large, just blog about their zeal, are “toxic people” who are going to make the (apparently unnecessary anyway?) feminist movement not be taken seriously

but the alarmingly common dudes on the street who generally regard women as eye candy are not toxic and in no danger of making anything not be taken seriously

do i have this right, is this the thing being said

the OP even admits the world is full of assholes but somehow implicitly concludes that raging against assholes is a bad thing

i am aware there are people who genuinely believe, let’s say, all PIV to be rape. i am also aware there are people who genuinely believe the trails left behind by jet engines to be full of mind-controlling chemicals designed by the government. i’ve encountered roughly the same number of people from both groups.

and i don’t pay much attention to any of them, because it’s pretty fucking obvious that everything they’re saying is ludicrous and no one will ever care

in fact, the only people i’ve seen who act like e.g. the “PIV is rape” mantra is something to take seriously, let alone who are aware of it in the first place, are people like you and the OP who decry all of feminism because it has some loonies in it

do you know the best way to ensure feminism isn’t taken seriously? make a big fucking hoopla about why no one should take feminism seriously

i really don’t understand how you can claim to be so worried that these other people might “make a joke out of the movement” when that’s 90% of what your tumblr is already doing

and unlike the conspiracy theorists, you are a reasonable person, and thus far more likely to be listened to and rallied around

so please understand that from where i’m standing, the best way to get feminism taken more seriously is to shut you down

dj-rigbydick:

dj-rigbydick:

dj-rigbydick:

dj-rigbydick:

kecrambles:

dj-rigbydick:

purplekecleon:

nessuno:

purplekecleon:

if you ever ask your artist friend for free art, even on your birthday, you’re using that person and they’re going to feel shitty…

there you go. doing stuff for free can land you in good places.

i use italics for a reason

i built a thing that i had a compelling interest in, with no time limits or other artificial constraints, using my own ideas

and i learned a great deal about my field from doing it, because any time i didn’t know how to do something, i could very easily use this personal project as a platform for learning it

and i did this for many years until i finally applied somewhere and impressed them with what i had done and what i could do†, not merely who i had done it for

and they agreed to pay me ludicrously to do more of it for them, because they thought my skill was worth it

what message do you think you’re sending by doing free art for strangers in the hopes that their friends are more generous? do you think that screams “my time and effort and blood and sweat and tears are worth lots of your money”?

or do you think those other clients you’re hoping to be introduced to take your talent for granted and would just as rather pass on you and find some other chump who’ll do it for free, hoping to be introduced to yet more friends?

† (ok also i’m white and appear male and speak english and whatnot and those all certainly help a great deal but they sort of deflate this grandiose story a bit, shh)

let us zoom out a bit

if you met an electrician at a party, would the first thing out of your mouth be “hey can you fix the wiring in my kitchen for free?”

if you struck up a conversation on the bus with someone who turned out to be an actor, would you immediately ask “oh cool can you come put on a show for me and my friends later”?

what??

you wouldn’t???

that would be incredibly obnoxious, objectifying, disrespectful, greedy, and shallow?????

then why the fuck is there even a convenient short term like “requests” for asking the same fucking thing of artists

yes, there are some artists who actively ask for requests, because they enjoy doing that. plenty of talented people like to give their time and skill freely. hell, everything i do is freely available.

and sure, if you are good friends with an artist and you actually need some small quantity of art for a project or other manner of thing you are actually doing, there are polite ways to ask for your friend’s help.

but what kind of person asks for it just because. not even to accomplish anything; just to have it, to collect it, to put it in a folder on your desktop and forget about it.

hey, it’s my birthday. can you go work a double shift at starbucks today

oh, no reason, just because i’d like to see you do it

what? you won’t?! because that’s ludicrous?!

some friend you are. i’ll go find someone who truly appreciates what i bring to the table.

if you were unaware and yet still somehow care: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5417252/

basically this is complete horseshit

let us take a magical adventure of discovery to find out why

full disclosure: i am a bitter old grump

more useful disclosure: if this gets reblogged everywhere for some reason, and you don’t know my qualifications, they are: i am good at computers and no one else in this story is

Announcing Fur Affinity: Project Phoenix

Fur Affinity is happy to announce that the next version of furaffinity.net is in active development. Our goal is simple, to provide you with a better experience that can be sustained and improved upon for years to come.

some other times they have been happy to announce this, according to my handy timeline:

• June 2006: announced Ferrox 2, the second (?) attempt to rewrite FA from scratch
• Sep 2007: call for devs for Ferrox 3, the third attempt to rewrite FA from scratch
• Jun 2009: previewed a new UI design created by Zaush, which had apparently been designed while Ferrox 3 was in progress, without a word to the Ferrox devs who had also been trying to make a design
• Mar 2010: some clueless nimrod starts working on a fourth attempt to rewrite FA from scratch, apparently blessed by FA, though this was never mentioned publicly and the developer was never listed as on staff
• Jan 2011: announced a designer would soon be hired to finish the new UI, now several years old and unchanged since it was first previewed
• Jan 2014: previewed the new UI, which is actually just a different page of the same fucking design from five years ago, except now the idiot dudebro designer is also playing developer

not to mention the features that have been promised several times over the past seven years, often multiple times, in a cycle of “we’ll do” … “we’ll have a beta soon” … forgotten and never mentioned again

• prints
• fine-grained filtering by subject matter
• gallery folders
• web hosting
• a URL shortener
• supporter ribbons

but worst of all is that people are still dumb enough not just to fall for the snake-oil, but to get all smarmy at others for calling it out as snake-oil. dragoneer has promised myriad things over the past eight years and delivered fucking none of them. the only things FA ever gets are either microscopic improvements that should take a few hours to fix, or the resurrection of features it already had, after they’ve been disabled for so long that they seem new again.

so if you are running around sighing melodramatically about how it’s a free site and how dare anyone complain, fuck you, douchenugget. how about i sock you in your dumb fucking mouth for free. apparently being lied to and strung along for almost a decade is totally fine if it’s free (even when an entire community is basing its business model on the platform), so i don’t see why the same shouldn’t apply to my little fuzzy fist in your face

moving right along

To reach this goal, we will be rewriting Fur Affinity from the ground up.

i know i just said this but here’s the part where i’m super extra bitter

see i was on the dev team for Ferrox 3. i wrote the bulk of it. i was the lead dev for a while after the original guy quit. i learned Python from that project.

but nobody cared. that’s the impression that sticks with me the most. nobody really had any input, except for dragoneer’s extremely passive-aggressive resistance on occasion.

the thing was intended to be open source from the start, but it took over a year for that to actually happen. a year! do you know how long it takes to put code on the internet like fucking twenty seconds. i don’t even remember what took so long. i’d hardly believe it except i wrote it in this timeline and i assume i know what i’m talking about.

that whole zaush design would’ve been pretty useful, since i’m a pretty amateur designer and had far less of an eye for subtlety back then. (compare ferrox design with the final design for squiggle. thumbnails are broken there, but you get the idea.) but no one mentioned it to me. or anyone. because dragoneer is super paranoid.

also the rest of the staff gossipped about what a pain in the ass i was while i wasn’t around, largely for being an argumentative ass about ferrox design and features on the forums. which i totally was, and which i sort of try to be less often in my old age. but, you know, at least other people on the forums showed some interest

which brings me to the super extra bitter part

ferrox was open source, right. it even attracted a couple contributors that way, one of whom did an incredible amount of work on floof/squiggle later on, and whom i’m eternally grateful towards (and guilty towards, since wow that’s a lot of work to do for things that were never finished). the important part here is that the code is free for anyone to use and work on. someone even stuck it on github recently. hell, one of the other developers is still on FA staff to this day

so

why have there been at least two more attempts to start from scratch in the past four years?

ferrox had a whole lot of plumbing in place. it was rapidly approaching pretty darn usable. i put a whole lot of effort into writing a database migrator that even fixed data problems (e.g.: fucked up threading incomments) and which was like 90% done.

and they never finished it. or even tried. the remaining dev never worked on it again after a few months. (i don’t even know wtf he does for them.) none of the talks of hiring a developer have mentioned hiring someone to finish the code they already have. ferrox 3 was, and is, the closest they have ever gotten to a functioning replacement for FA, and they had so little interest in it that they have let it rot all this time.

which is why this announcement is such a joke.

oh, man, i hate the “hire a developer” schtick too. for two reasons.

one is that, jesus christ, do you even know how much developers get paid? way too much. starting salary for a new grad is like $60k. that’s $30 an hour. a week of work costs $1200. and we are talking about a project that would take a couple of months to do badly. these people don’t have any money; they can barely afford their own bandwidth bill. where the fuck are they going to find the cash to hire someone who (a) actually knows anything, (b) is willing to tolerate building a site for hosting giant cartoon penises, and © is not one of the very small pool of competent furry programmers, all of whom have been driven away and are busy with their own stuff anyway?

the other is more philosophical, and i always wish i could find the link for this, but: it turns out that paying someone for a job e already wants to do can ruin the interest in it. if someone does something for free, it’s out of belief and conviction and joy and all those warm fuzzies. if you starting handing out material rewards, it becomes about the amount of the rewards, and the activity itself becomes less enjoyable. there was even a recent study where they watched little kids who did art stuff in their free time in school; they gave half of them a reward for doing art stuff, and that half ended up spending less time doing art stuff in their free time later. because it stopped being about passion and started being about what can i get out of it. for a niche community site like FA, that is the last thing you want.

jesus christ we’re only on the second paragraph still

Codenamed Project Phoenix, we’re able to take full advantage of new technologies that have emerged since Fur Affinity’s birth

lol

l o l

i got spoiled on this because i saw the forums thread before this announcement

are you ready for this

the “new technologies that have emerged since Fur Affinity’s birth”

they are talking about node.js

they are talking about javascript

javascript is the cutting-edge new technology that will revolutionize FA

i cannot get over how fucking absurd this is

the person who wrote this cannot possibly have any comprehension of what is actually going on

WHICH IS another problem they’ve got over there: the most competent tech is yak, and he is not very competent. he is holding things together with duct tape and fishing wire. and he constantly says he’s working on getting more people (no, seriously, it’s been like three years since i first saw him say this), but he’s waiting on dragoneer to approve people. and dragoneer says separately and elsewhere that he has no idea what’s going on and no one will tell him, because he is a hapless victim who only owns the fucking site and pays for everything.

shockingly, not a lot gets done

ensuring the site is easily maintained and extended upon for years to come.

i like the key word “easily” in here, implying that the site has been maintained and extended ever, at all

and again, this is javascript. javascript will make the site easy to maintain

javascript

javascript

We’re also working on a visual refresh, improving the overall look and feel, as well as the user experience.

i stress that this is the same visual refresh as was first unveiled almost five years ago

now, though, we have a mockup of the notes page, which looks kind of like someone wanted to copy Outlook but with even worse colors. i think he spent longer on those sweet web 2.0 monochrome icons

this actually looks worse than the 2009 design, which at least used, like… a color

i keep rereading this sentence and it just makes me angry somewhere in my caveman parts. it has a slick oily gloss of PR, using words that sound like things a Serious Business would say, without actually conveying anything. but it’s not just not conveying anything; the author doesn’t actually know what to convey. there is nothing to be said, because there is nothing going on.

consider that usually an unveiling of a new design—of anything—comes with some commentary by the designer. because people tend to be proud of good work they do, and they want to walk you through the things they have done, and what led them to those decisions, and why they think those decisions are good, and how they hope it’ll work better for you.

i mean, to pick an arbitrary example, look at this most recent github blog post that happens to have screenshots in it. it’s actually way shorter than most of their unveilings, but still infinitely more genuine than FA’s quote above. they sound like they are actually talking about the thing in the screenshot, like they care about it. hell, they sound like they’ve used it. (which they have. github dogfoods everything.) they say what it is, what it can do for you, where to find it, and that they’re happy to have done it.

now, not everyone blogs about every design change they make. but generally you either see a post made by someone who is genuinely attached to the work, or just a silent change. there’s not a lot of middle ground.

except with FA, where there’s a faint obligation to post something (because that’s what you do, and it’s way easier than actually getting the work done), but nothing to say about it. because no one is invested, really. no one who has any actual political power also has any creative or technical power. so all that comes out is a jumble of appropriate-sounding words, with no heart behind any of them.

how are they improving the user experience? what do they even think that means? no one knows, and no one cares, as long as it sounds good.

and it must sound good, because there are people saying the new ui looks amazing and they can’t wait for it

ho ho

yes they can

We’ll be holding our design to a higher standard to ensure that Fur Affinity provides ease of use while retaining high visual appeal.

“holding our design to a higher standard” would seem to suggest that the design is currently ugly as sin

and yet, “high visual appeal”

this is some sweet doubletalk

does “ensure [it] provides ease of use” mean it currently doesn’t, or that it should continue to do so?

this is even more hollow than before; it doesn’t mean anything at all!

Fur Affinity relies on its community, and it’s because of you that we’re all here today. We’d like to thank you for your patience and your faith.

you condescending prick. the best way to show gratitude for patience and faith (called collectively “goodwill”, a thing so valuable that real companies list it on their balance sheets and give it a dollar value) is to not keep yanking chains.

From today, we’re going to be posting regular updates regarding this project and the site in general.

i swear to god this is the sixth time this has been said, at least.

no one there—

ok, let’s be honest, this is pretty much all dragoneer

dragoneer does not seem to grasp that promising things does not magically make them come true

much better than to promise regular updates is to just start fucking doing something, so that it becomes a natural habit

e.g. look at me, i am already getting way more in the habit of tumbling jumbled thoughts, and in turn i’ve made a bit more headway in blogging For Real

tweet design revisions. keep a dev journal. open source the fucking codebase or something so people can actually see what is happening instead of having to chug on this PR swill

or maybe that’s it. i really do think dragoneer is paranoid (generally) about FA and his control over it, and this is another symptom: he does not want anyone to know what’s going on unless it goes through him first

2014 is a new year for us, and we want to increase transparency and trust for all aspects of the administration.

no one cares what you want

just do it

lol who am i kidding half the comments are from people who are genuinely excited to be promised all these things. are y'all new here or just really forgetful i really don’t know

i think “transparency” has come up before, but like most PR, dragoneer doesn’t seem to understand what it means. it means people can see inside, and he has never made the slightest iota of effort to make that happen. where did all those furocity admins go, i wonder? was that ever even discussed publicly? so many things are kept hush-hush as “site business”, like anyone gives a damn about the business secrets of Fur Affinity™

About Fur Affinity: Fur Affinity was created in 2005 as an outlet for creative expression within the furry community. Today it continues to be the largest active community site for the furry fandom.

are you serious, are you actually trying to write a press release

About the Team:

oh my jesus lord you are

We’ve established a team experienced in product management, UI, and the development of large-scale web applications.

i’ll believe that when i—

Dragoneer: Owner and head admin of Fur Affinity, Dragoneer has been with FA since 2005. He manages the organization as a whole as part of his day-to-day responsibilities. For Project Phoenix, he provides top-level guidance and direction to ensure the project meets the organization’s needs and vision for the future of FA.

top-level guidance and direction

where the fuck was any of that the last four fucking rewrites

what the fuck experience does dragoneer have in product management? he BOUGHT the current incarnation of FA, and under his leadership, four software projects have gotten confused and lost and ultimately failed

here, right here, is your opportunity to be transparent. and that you didn’t even think of it while writing means you have no idea what transparency is.

what are the “organization’s needs and vision for the future”?

seriously, what are they? what does this Phoenix project actually intend to do? anything concrete. anything at all.

you don’t have a fucking clue. and if you did, you wouldn’t say. and if you did say, it wouldn’t happen anyway!

Adam Wan: Also known in the fandom as Zaush. Development lead for the new Fur Affinity. Adam has over 11 years of experience in various technical fields such as web development, game engine development, UX, and applications for integrated systems. Lately his work has been related to user experience, complex intranet tools, and integrated applications.

for the less technical in the audience, “intranet” means “only works with IE6”

for the even less technical in the audience, every time i say “for the less technical in the audience”, i am about to make a really dumb technical joke

this guy is Sir Rapist

or maybe he’s not a rapist but honestly i do not give a fuck

if you are accused of rape and your response is to tweet “don’t stick your dick in crazy!” in the most dudebro fashion imagineable, even if you did absolutely nothing wrong, you are still an abomination of a human being for being incapable of taking this seriously for even a picosecond

not like there aren’t similar stories (cont’d, cont’d) about him

but most appalling at all is that people are showing up to defend him, to say that hey sometimes people do lie about rape and assault

and that is true: sometimes they do

however let us consider the example you are setting here

you are telling any charismatic popular person in a position of power that, hey, it’s fine to lean across the line. maybe even cross it a bit. maybe even cross it entirely. because even if we find out, we’ll be here to cast doubt on the unknown nobody you chose to target.

i.e. you are making it easy to shrug off accusations of rape, which makes it easier to get away with rape. (this wasn’t even an accusation; it was uncovered only because FA’s entire private message database leaked.) so, you know, fuck you with the horse you rode in on.

ctrlaltdel123: Developer working under Adam Wan to help with the new Fur Affinity. He has experience designing, implementing, and testing real-time software systems and web applications.

who the fuck is this? the only internet presence he even has is the same four pictures of an oversaturated blue mewtwo posted several places

Nanuk: Product and marketing lead for the new Fur Affinity. Nanuk has experience managing and marketing products for large scale web properties. He works to help organize planning and development of the new Fur Affinity, while maintaining transparency with the community.

i don’t know who this is either but he seems to have been doing a lot of damage control on the announcement thread, so i guess he might actually do the thing his role is for

oh wait wow this is nice great

one of his earliest comments is this gem, responding to an early question about whether the project will be open source:

While a proprietary nature of code is one aspect when deciding whether or not to make a project open source or not, it often boils down to the flexibility that can be afforded for a closed-source codebase as opposed to an open source codebase. The code can be specifically tailored for FA in every aspect, as opposed to a generic image board software, of which countless numbers of open-source alternatives exist online.

this is fucking insane. it doesn’t make any sense at all, made all the worst by being written to sound like it’s supposed to. in fact it appears so coherent that i almost suspect it’s an outright lie.

you don’t have to make your app be super generic to be open source.

you know firefox’s extension website? addons.mozilla.org? well here it is. who the fuck is ever going to need to run that except mozilla? fucking nobody. but they release the source anyway, because that’s what they do. they release the source to everything.

it goes without saying, of course, (and here i’m about to say it again) that this cannot possibly be true since FA has already had a rewrite attempt that was open source.

marketing lead indeed

anyway

i don’t know how to end long-winded intense posts

it always feels like i should have some cool conclusion, and i’m bad at those, because i totally just said everything i wanted to say??

basically fuck most of the people involve in this clusterfuck

i wanted to build a cool art site, truly. i even still do

but i do not want to play furry politics and i do not want to play marketer

so i’m going to try improving on regexes instead because at least i know programmers will appreciate programming tools

i’m shuffling this post around a bit because there’s an important bit at the bottom that’s needed for some interesting context

oratorasaurus:

You will notice that I have not even touched “social discrimination” such as a group of women, on a popular talk show, cheering and laughing about a woman who cut off and destroyed a man’s penis simply because he was divorcing her. Or gender stereotypes forcing men to work to their deaths, treating men as predators and pedophiles, that sort of thing.

That is because I recognize that though social discrimination is bad, ultimately you still have choice and agency. People can mock you for being a male who likes sewing, but ultimately you can still choose to do it or not. But that pales in comparison to actual oppression, where you genuinely have no choice about the matter.

Note the numerous examples of governmental and legal discrimination against men.

These are examples of real discrimination, where there is literally nothing you can do about it. Not “discrimination” where women do more housework.

Most of the discrimination against men described here government-enforced discrimination, which is involuntary, non-consensual, and inescapable.

For instance, if you are a male victim of domestic violence, you cannot simply choose to walk into a government funded men’s shelter - they don’t exist. You cannot choose to call the pro-male police who fairly punish female batterers; there is only one police, and they are likely to arrest you if you do make the call.

In contrast, a lot of discrimination that feminists discuss is what I call societal discrimination, which is voluntary, consensual, and less significant.

Feminists state, as evidence of discrimination, that women do more unpaid housework due to societal norms. Even if that is true, given that surveys are biased and do not include male work like car repair, exterior house repair, etc. that is not discrimination since women are choosing to do more housework. They are choosing to be involved with men who do less housework, and choosing to tolerate such a state. They make that choice freely, without coercion. That is why it is not discrimination.

i observe that it’s never considered here whether women can choose to find men who do more housework. there are a lot of men, but there are also a lot of police officers, so the same logic would surely seem to apply. why is it a woman’s choice whether she falls in love with a man who feels chores should be shared equally, but not a man’s choice whether he approaches a cop who takes domestic violence against men seriously?

anyway the important part here is: problems that arise from personal choice are considered irrelevant. got it? ok.

1. Women are treated better in all aspects of the legal system. For instance, women receive lighter sentences and a higher chance of acquittal, simply for being women.

we have tread this ground before; much of it can be chalked up to men committing worse crimes than women, and black men in particular being hit hard because the system is hecka racist

2. Men are significantly more likely to be the victims of violent crime (of which rape is included) than women.

this link is down so i have no idea what it says, alas

3. Despite domestic violence being equally committed by women, for the most part only male perpetrators are arrested:

this is just a bibliography of papers i cannot easily read, but the summary of this one near the top is fascinating:

(…the author reports that women are more likely than men to throw something at their partners, as well as slap, kick, bite, punch and hit with an object. Men were more likely than women to strangle, choke, or beat up their partners.)

i’d wondered about this, and it’s nice that you’ve provided a source suggesting it: violence from men is significantly more brutal than violence from women.

this is the same class of error you made with the prison claim: there is a significant difference in magnitude of incidents involving men versus women. women slap, men choke.

4. The feminist definition of domestic violence has skewed arrest and prosecution philosophies, resulting in having mostly male batterers criminally pursued, and female batterers left alone.

but if so many female batterers are slapping and throwing things… frankly, how many men would call the police over that? and how many women would call the police if their partners tried to choke them?

a cursory glance over the previous bibliography suggests that most of the data comes from surveys, which in turn could easily mean that many male victims of domestic violence simply don’t consider it worthy of police involvement

5. It is legal to circumcise male babies against their will. In some places, laws have been passed which forbid any attempts to make male circumcision illegal. Meanwhile, female circumcision is completely illegal, even though some types of female circumcision are equivalent in harm to male circumcision, and other types (a symbolic prick to draw blood) are non-harmful.

while routine infant circumcision is indeed total bs, you seem to have a severe misunderstanding of just what female circumcision is. it is the removal of the clit, equivalent to the removal of the entire male glans. they are absolutely not equivalent in harm; female circumcision can easily leave women unable to ever orgasm (exactly the intended effect), whereas many American men can tell you the same is not true for them.

6. Men comprise 95% of workplace deaths.

7. Men commit suicide at over triple the rate that women do.

8. The vast majority of prisoners are men.

ah, and here’s why i put the concluding bit first.

are men not choosing to take far more dangerous jobs? they could be nurses and secretaries.

are men not choosing to take their own lives?

are men not choosing to commit more crimes, and ones that are more severe to boot?

it is not at all clear to me how these three things are the result of active government discrimination, which is how you yourself are defining oppression

moreover: what do you suggest be done about these? there’s no clear instigator to go after, yet you seem content merely to parade them around as evidence of your oppression

9. Men are doing worse in all aspects of the educational system, from kindergarten to university.

this is now a domain park

10. Men who are falsely accused of rape can have their names published and their lives ruined even if they are not convicted or charged - their accuser is protected and is likely to face no punishment, or a light one.

what you say has nothing to do with the linked story; this is a tale of men falsely accused of rape successfully suing those who falsely prosecuted them under bad faith. at worst this is classic corruption in the justice system, and at best it’s a success story where the justice system is correcting itself.

11. Reproductive rights. Men have none. Simply read this story.

12. Parental rights. Men have virtually none. See below.

the law is probably suboptimal here, yes

but this is really a hypothetical tale about what one person could to do another when they trust each other with their lives. you could just as easily weave a tale about a man who lies to his long-time girlfriend about having had a vasectomy and bails as soon as she’s pregnant. or, worse, lies about not having something like HIV.

the irony is that these laws almost certainly exist because the government has long considered it critically important to preserve something that looks roughly like the nuclear family (and as part of that, treats the mother like she can’t take care of herself)

13. The majority of homeless are men.

again, how is the government discriminating here? is it giving free houses to homeless women only?

also, careful phrasing here. the majority of people are women, too, but when you’re only dividing everyone into two groups that doesn’t mean anything. we have seen before that just under 60% of homeless are men, which is imbalanced but not outlandishly so.

14. Despite men’s need being arguably greater than women, government spending to help women is 10 to 100 times greater than that to help men. That figure is unrelated to medical spending.

15. In 2009/2010 it was $1,516,460 toward men and $57,562,373 toward women. In 2010/2011 it was $3,740,800 toward men and $48,331,443 toward women. In 2008/2009 the province dedicated $561,360 toward men’s resources and $98,983,236 toward women’s resources. (figures are for British Columbia, Canada, but representative of Western society).

(“unrelated to medical spending”, but the very first link here says it was for ovarian cancer. many of these are about housing for the homeless, yes.)

looking at the source website, though, it seems the vast majority of housing initiatives are for people of either gender. there are millions and millions of dollars here spent on facilities available to both men and women, and you are severely skewing the ratio by counting only those available to either men or women.

16. Female-owned businesses get free government money for literally no reason other than being a woman (i.e. all other factors are equal, same size of business, same income, etc. etc. but the owner’s gender is different = money or no money.

yes, it’s a common practice to give money to groups who are underrepresented. the majority (!) of business owners are already men.

17. On some airlines, men were banned from sitting next to kids on airplanes, simply because they were men. Why? Because men are pedophiles, obviously. This ban remains on some airlines, such as Air New Zealand.

shouldn’t you be applauding this story? a man successfully sued the airline over this—meaning the government supported gender equality. if Air New Zealand is still doing this, link a story that says that, not one that says your problem has already been solved three years ago.

18. Under a recent federal directive, men are convicted of rape in university campuses if the investigating board finds that the chances they committed the rape are at 50.00001% or greater.

i admit i don’t understand exactly how DoE “directives” work, but this all hinges on interpreting sexual assault as sex discrimination (?!) which sounds completely bogus from the start

19. The DOE policy in practice: Caleb Warner was accused of rape and expelled from the University of North Dakota, then his accuser was charged with filing a false report. He remains expelled as of June 2011.

he was unexpelled in october 2011

20. Selective service. Enough said.

agreed, but this argument would have more teeth if the draft had ever actually been used.

note that women have been excluded from the draft because they have historically been barred from fighting on the front lines. (which kind of sounds like discrimination against women, actually.) this is no longer the case as of last January, so perhaps the draft will change as well shortly.

i’m strongly considering making an attempt to write two books (conveniently designed so i can do any part of any of them in any order):

• a beginner’s guide to programming that starts from absolutely nothing and alternates frequently between theory/practice, multiple languages, multiple platforms, etc. so you would have to context switch a bit early on, but ultimately you would be able to make actual things instead of just text-only programs that convert from feet to meters. (this will probably span endless volumes and be an eternal work in progress)
• a math book collab with lati in which each chapter tries to explain, in an actually accessible way, some topic that we feel western education treats extremely poorly. probably limited to calc 2 + linalg and below. ex: logarithms, trig functions, complex numbers

would you be interested in reading these

would you be interested in beta-reading these as i write them (because i have a hard time sticking with a project that i can’t use myself in a vacuum)

and most importantly, would you be interested in giving me dollars for a hard copy of these

dontneedfeminism:

“no crime, no workplace injury, no suicide, no homelessness, and no custody battles.”

If that’s what your goal is, then have fun never achieving it.

it’s what i would like to see. it’s what i hope everyone would like to see.

why, what’s your goal?

Feminists see *everything* as worse for women, even the things that are in reality, equally bad for men (rape and domestic violence for example). I’d like to know exactly which issues actually *are* worse for women, because every time I’ve had a Feminist bring up supposed “women’s issues” they’ve either been:

i am hardly the spokesperson for feminist theory

but the one closest to home is that women (and several racial minorities) are vastly under-represented in software engineering, and even moreso in open source software

also i particularly like this study in which scientists were given a résumé to evaluate, purportedly for a student applying to grad school. everyone was given the same résumé, but half of them had a male name and half had a female name. across the board the male name earned a better reported impression. so who knows what is going on in STEM generally.

A) Issues that effect men just as much or;

so let’s solve them for everyone. that is an admirable thing to do and i will fight anyone who tries to stop you

but distinct from issues that affect men just as much are issues that have different negative effects on men and women

for example, while women still win more custody battles, that also means most single parents (about 5 in 6) are single mothers. and over a third of single mothers have never been married.

more men die from workplace accidents, but there are indeed feminists who care that fewer women work in those dangerous jobs. earlier this year i saw a story about a group of women fighting to be allowed to work in coal mines somewhere. alas now i can’t find it, and google only turns up people asking why feminists don’t fight to get more women in coal mines.

more money goes to breast cancer, but that’s because people want to save boobs. (look at the flak angelina jolie took.) also as i recall much of the money actually goes to raising “awareness”, not so much actually curing anything, as if anyone were not aware that breast cancer exists. everyone feels better for wearing little ribbons that support breasts. i mean, breast cancer.

these are the things feminists refer to when they say that feminism is for men too

B) Social issues like catcalling or slut shaming, which involve the opinions of people and therefore aren’t really problems you can solve.

err the advertising and political campaigning industries would like to have a word with you

besides, it’s social issues all the way down. laws and shelters and prisons and whathaveyou were all still built by people, and you fix them by changing people’s opinions.

if there’s a wage gap, that’s a reflection of your boss’s opinion of you. if there are fewer women in politics, that’s a reflection of voters’ opinions of who should run the country. more women getting custody and more men in jail? judges’ opinions. none of this is carved in stone anywhere; it’s just a pattern we notice after the fact. and if it’s a reflection of our culture, all anyone can do is keep talking about it and encourage people to pay more attention to how they regard each other.

so isn’t changing opinions exactly what you’re trying to do?

dontneedfeminism:

mr-cappadocia:

Would feminists feel that equality has been reached when 50% of the prison population consisted of women? When 50% of workplace deaths consisted of women? When 50% of suicides consisted of women? When 50% of homeless were women and 50% of women lost their children in divorce?

Does anyone reading this believe for a single solitary moment that feminists would EVER fight to deprive women of their children to benefit men? To actively work to create that 50% of women who lose their children to men. It would certainly be equal.

Somehow, I don’t think so. This is why I think Feminism and Feminists in general are full of shit.

The practical application of the stated goals of their ideology (equal rights/economics/etc etc for all) would require women to ACTIVELY WORK AGAINST THEIR OWN INTERESTS.

i have several simultaneous comments

1. yes

2. well, 51%

3. what is your proposal? the last paragraph strongly implies that the only solution is to increase the number of homeless women, women committing suicide, etc. to balance the numbers out. this seems impractical.

   what i would actually like to see is not equal representation in tragedy, but a reduction in tragedy: no crime, no workplace injury, no suicide, no homelessness, and no custody battles. if these problems concern you so much, you should work to address them, not flaunt them as evidence of how hard up you are by demographic proxy.

   feminists see things that are worse for women, and want to make them better for women. you see things that are worse for men, and apparently want to make them worse for women.